Chicago's Amusement Tax Asks Big Tech to Start Paying Its Fair Share Jack Bandy examines Chicago’s social media tax and how Big Tech is seeking to overturn the city's effort.

www.techpolicy.press/chicagos-amu...

My "hot take" is that we need to call out the inconsistency here and find the legal-political willpower to make Big Tech companies pay their taxes.

After years of Big Tech claiming "we're not publishers!" for the sake of Section 230 protections, now, to avoid paying taxes, they are comparing themselves to newspapers.

New op-ed in @techpolicypress.bsky.social!

Chicago's amusement tax has gone into effect, and of course, Big Tech companies are trying to avoid it. Specifically, they are appealing to a 1983 Supreme Court decision...

It me!

It's sooooo fun checking this box 29 times per day

The phrase "we are so back" is thrown around a lot these days...

Pairs well w/ Chris Tester's reading of "intelligence is a utility" www.youtube.com/shorts/96qjN...

You're not imagining it — something feels different today. Here's the part most people miss: it's not just the day after Monday... it's Tuesday. And honestly? Nobody talks about Tuesday. The best part: you're not alone in this. It's Tuesday for me, too. For all of us.

Who's tuned in to the future of Chicago stormwater management

The Therac-25 was linked to three deaths and is a relatively famous cautionary tale in the computer ethics world.

The “Deaths linked to chatbots” Wikipedia article is already up to sixteen entries.

A survey that says "Do you like this personality?" with a thumbs up or thumbs down as options.

Logged into ShatGPT for the first time in a while and it literally gave me this survey AFTER A SINGLE PROMPT

Well this is fascinating: “switching [the algorithm] off did not reverse users' perspectives on policy priorities or current political issues.”

Obi Wan Kenobi saying “oh I don’t think so”

“You’ve run out of free articles”

Also shoutout to @aurman21.bsky.social et al. for publishing data from their excellent review, which made it easy to add 100+ human-labeled audits to the database

Got around to updating this list of algorithm audits!

Still need to do some more manual review of studies, but there is now a web interface so you can, for example, see all audits of TikTok, or OpenAI, or shuffle to see some random audits 😃

Check it out!
comp-journalism.github.io/list-of-algo...

It’s difficult to describe how much delight I get from opening this tin and finding actual butter cookies

Real journalism is alive

This is what we call gastrodiplomacy, and the world could use a lot more of it.

Hand-drawn clouds own a blue sky, with plants on the ground. Overlayed text says "you can detect ai easily if you have love in your heart." The dot on each "i" is a heart, except in "ai," where the dot is a broken heart. Image via sweetfellasofficial on instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/DPjcBpLAj74/

This theory grows stronger each and every semester

Happy piping plover day to all who celebrate!

Have we safely archived Andor?

ICE has powerful facial recognition app Illinois cops are barred from using — with little apparent oversight The administration has contracts with Clearview AI, a firm banned from doing business with Illinois police agencies. “This is what dystopian nightmares are made of, this kind of continual expansion of...

ICE is using Clearview AI, the controversial facial recognition tool that Illinois law enforcement is barred from using.

There’s apparently few guardrails.

A DHS face recognition policy was wiped from the internet in February. Other pages were archived or disappeared

tinyurl.com/yc64wcvh

Looking forward to today's class

Bluesky Jobs Bluesky Jobs

We’re hiring for two machine learning roles. A chance to do cutting edge things with ML to make this place a lot more personalized.

jobs.gem.com/bluesky/am9i...

Altman in 2024: "We have no idea how we may one day generate revenue. We have made a soft promise to investors that once we've built this sort of generally intelligent system, basically we will ask it to figure out a way to generate an investment return for you."

Pickin fonts on a Tuesday

And they're hiring! Great opportunity for anyone who's interested in becoming an AI Alignment Alignment Alignment Researcher.

a man in a black hat and white jacket says we were on the verge of greatness we were this close Alt: clip from the movie Rogue One: a man in a black hat and white jacket says "we were on the verge of greatness we were this close"

Frequently having this feeling whenever I use Zotero